Carni and Fiber

#21

agree with ya that stats can show but actual science shows in real truths the body does not require, ever, never, ever, one plant material in food for survival. the body requires fat and protein for actual total survival to function and live. NOW WHERE that comes from? eat some avacado with fat? live? ok if fat enough but what other real nutrients does one get from it for total survival? Zip. Meat/animal provides it all. Plants will never which is why literally vegans fail alot unless they understand the truth of beans and fat content, vs. other plants that up more nutrients for iron and zinc and more to ‘live’ and why many wither. Remember also on those stats, lets put that 15-10% or so MEAT and what it gives and then lets chat a ton of stress in life, pollution factors, genetics and more, would the stats still ever be what is ‘perceived’…nope.

just some chat on it.

#22

My main concerns about the Carnivore diet would be kidney function long term an how long the waste byproduct sits inside. Plus, the research if any is completely biased. Dr. Shawn Baker a big proponent of Carnivore lost his medical license for a period of two years due to concerns about his competency. I now believe balance is the key to optimum health.

#23

Survival is not the same as optimization. Depending on which scientist you want to quote. Some scientists with skin in the game will cherry-pick their data and say humans did not eat grains until about 10,000 years ago. However, most anthropologists know this is not the case. They ate what was available, Ad Libitum. feast or famine. Show me a place on the planet that has an inordinate of centenarians that are healthy and don’t have fibre in their diet.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #24

Since the human species appears to have evolved over two million years eating mostly, if not exclusively, meat (as shown from radioisotopic analyses of early human bones), this doesn’t seem like a realistic fear.

“Balance” is a tricky concept. You are surely not arguing that a “balanced” diet requires strychnine or arsenic in it, even though it could be considered “extreme” to exclude them completely from the diet. I’m not mocking you by saying this, only pointing out that “balance” is an idea that needs to be applied carefully.

The benefit of eating plants is doubtful. See Dr. Michael Eades’s lecture on “Paleopathology and the Ketogenic Diet,” available on YouTube in various incarnations, to see what the archaeological evidence shows. One fascinating point he makes is that the skeletons of people from hunter-gatherer cultures are in markedly better shape than those of people from agricultural cultures, to the point where an archaeologist can distinguish them visually, without waiting for confirmation from an isotopic analysis.

This was true of the native tribes of the Great Plains of North America, who were known for the number of centenarians in their populations, at least until they were driven from their hunting grounds and had to start eating the processed food supplied by the white settlers.

#25

Balance is important but what does balance mean in diet? I can’t grasp it. A good carnivore diet seems pretty much balanced to me :slight_smile: Well, if it suits the one who eats it, of course, it’s not for everyone.
We need to get all the necessary nutrients, not too much from harmful substances… Surely there are some other things too… But we don’t need to eat many food groups and non-essential things like fiber. If we don’t belong to the group that seems to need it. We are all humans but our needs are different.
Meat is definitely not essential as no item is, people live just fine without it as long as they eat right - but I could only lead a probably quite healthy, long live without meat, I wouldn’t feel OPTIMAL due to the low but still too high carb intake. As I may not need the meat, but I need nutrients from it that I can’t get from other animal products and plants are just too carby except the plant fats but they won’t help me out…
And I would get upset and possibly transform into a monster if my precies eggs would be taken away.
So we have our specific needs, we can’t just follow what “a human body” actually needs.

#26

Where to begin? First, not all societies ate meat exclusively. Yes, it was highly prized for its fat and meat, but most hunter-gathers lived on what they could find. Look at the Hadza of Tanzania, still living as hunters and gatherers. Their diet is game when they are successful at hunting, honey, plants such as tubers, berries and the baobab fruit.
As a numbers person, Kidney function can be measured. Most people are not even aware their kidneys are performing badly. When diagnosed they are already at stage 3 or higher.
The native tribes of the Great Plains of North America had a life span of no more than 35 years before Columbus. After Columbus, it rose to about 45 years of age until about the late 1800s. Yes, the old world did have a dreadful impact on diseases in the new world but the new world was hardly a healthful Eden.
These numbers are from the largest and most comprehensive study ever done on the indigenous population’s health and nutrition. (The backbone of History: Health and Nutrition in the Western Hemisphere)
Dr. Michael Eades has some good information. But he also likes to cherry-pick his data to strengthen his position. Confirmation bias. He is also the Denver diet doctor.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #27

What else would they have eaten? Agriculture was not invented until 10-12,000 years ago, and before we started breeding plants, most fruits and vegetables were tough and fibrous. Not much nutrition, there.

Most societies on their traditional, mostly-meat diets called plants “famine food.”

That, I’d like to see data for. I suspect you are confusing life span with life expectancy. The latter is a statistical average determined from actuarial data, and before the 1940’s it was highly skewed by infant mortality and infectious diseases. But assuming one can evade infections, one can live a surprisingly long life.

The churchyard of St. James’s Church in Hyde Park (where the Roosevelts attended) is a case in point. There are far too many tombstones of people who died in childhood, many with both dates in the same year—or even sadder, just a single date. They bring down the average considerably. But there are also very many tombstones for people who lived into their eighties or nineties.

Likewise, in my mother’s family, the eldest child died at age seven from whooping cough, but the other siblings survived into adulthood and died in their nineties. My grandmother died of a heart attack at 69, but Grandpa lived into his nineties. One of my father’s aunts just died at 104; one of her elder sisters lived to 107. My Nana died young, at 96. She made it into her forties before antibiotics became available, so that says something.

I’m not sure what this paragraph means. “Denver’s Diet Doctor” is Dr. Jeffrey Gerber, one of the co-founders (with Dr. Rod Taylor) of Low Carb Down Under, which sponsors conferences in various locations in Australia and Colorado. Michael and Mary Dan Eades are the authors of Protein Power.

#28
(Megan) #29

Regardless of whether fiber is helpful or unhelpful for the general population, this question was asked in relation to people eating zero carb/carnivore. From all I have read, and my own personal experience, zero fiber consumption doesn’t pose a problem for those eating no plant matter. It is important, however, to give your body time to adjust to this way of eating. My bowel definitely went through an adjustment period, but once through it I love how my gut feels eating this way. No bloating, no discomfort, next to no wind (burps or farts), and no indigestion.

#30

great info on the board. Paul always has great info to add.
and Megan makes a fab point, regardless of any of it, the carnivore lifestyle changes people’s lives off all fiber. And again, no fiber is required for humans to live at all. ie, no plants ingested. Protein and fat are key life to the body, without this we perish. Not 1 carb from plant material is required by a body to live at all…so…but yes, many humans function great on intake of plant matter, no doubt on that, but like Megan said, when it comes to those on carnivore plan, we thrive off the plants.

so those who thrive on carnivore are always gonna say fiber be damned LOL

Key being one must say that the medical community has absolutely added to that age increase. Without the medicines that have evolved we wouldn’t be having this discussion on a lifespan into the 100s for a bigger part of the population. sure there could be a unicorn but without true modern medicine of today most ain’t making it that far no matter what they are eating :slight_smile:

(KM) #31

Perhaps this should be a topic of its own, and I’m mulling over how political I can get, without… getting political. Or too paranoid … Really I’m just unpacking my own prejudice to see why I can’t rid myself of being an herbophile even though I’m unconvinced scientifically that plants are good and necessary for human health.

I’m not saying this is a recognized agenda, but it first occurred to me when listening to Frances Moore Lappe … who said that globally speaking, you can feed a lot more people if you feed them plants. The obvious direction for people pushing to maintain or expand human population, whether they ever express this or not, is to move us in the direction of herbivores, by pushing the health benefits of plants, and by making meat eating a moral failure. :face_with_monocle:

#32

Throwing out lots of food is a moral failure… We should do something about that. And many other areas, of course. Keeping animals for food is important, it wouldn’t be all fine without them even if it wasn’t totally irrealistic to make people stop eating meat, it’s a complex topic, I have just watched a video about it… And locally the situation is different. The population of my country is diminishing and we have plenty of lands (I just hope people finally realized watering is needed as our climate changed and we have droughts now), no problem here… I just follow the wishes of my body and feel pretty good about my very, very nearly zero food waste - especially if I stop wasting food by eating too much of it but with plants, it happens way easier. It never was a question how I should eat. As little plant matter as comfortably possible.

And I am still patiently waiting for cheap, low resources cricket as my food! :smiley:

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #33

That may be so, in the sense that you might be putting more bulk in their bellies (but even there, there is a limit to how much land can grow crops, and much of it is already depleted), but what about the quality of protein? Plants appear to have a lot of protein, but not all the nitrogen they contain is actually usable. There is a big difference between crude protein and digestible protein.

For the human body to be able to use it, nitrogen must be packaged in an amino acid. And the availability of protein in a foodstuff is determined by the percentage of the least available essential amino acid. If a protein doesn’t contain enough lysine, for example, any abundance of other amino acids is wasted. The protein source that contains all the necessary amino acids in the correct proportion is beef.

The revese, however, is actually true, however non-obvious. Given the limited amount of cropland available, and the much larger extent of forage lands, it actually makes sense to graze ruminants on that land. The benefit is that, done right, grazing can actually improve soil quality, restore microbial life, restore nutrients to the soil, eliminate the need for fertilisers and pesticides (leading to a significant reduction in the carbon footprint of meat produced this way), and improve the nutrient profile of the meat. The result is better water permeability (which reduces or eliminates flooding), protection against drought, and even a noticeable improvement in rainfall (because dead soil reflects back heat that drives clouds away). Not to mention all the carbon sequestered in the process.

(KM) #34

Like I said, this is mostly me unpacking my resistance.

First, I agree with everything you’ve said. But the undertone of her work (Diet For A Small Planet) is that human population itself, all 8+ billion souls, must be preserved (and ideally expanded) first and foremost, at whatever cost to anything else including the overall wellbeing of humans or the planet. I’m too much of a pragmatist to embrace this argument intellectually, no matter how much loving-kindness it appears to exude. It’s shortsighted and ultimately both cruel and counter-productive, possibly even catastrophic.

What I’m getting at is that it’s a hard one to argue in public. Even if the point is population reduction by old-age attrition, anything less than the glorification of humanity makes it sound like one’s advocating mass murder. So the meme generated doesn’t really reflect reality, it reflects wishful thinking, and that viewpoint has influenced a lot of spiritual/religious dogma in the larger culture. I find, emotionally, this wave of belief in pro-herbivore superiority has trickled down (into ME, for crap’s sake!) to promote plants over animals as a human food source, making me more uneasy than I should be about personally embracing a carni diet.

Yesterday was 100% carni except for a cup of coffee and a dash of horseradish sauce. I think I ate half a salmon. Progress! :yum:

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #35

Wow! You’ve put your finger on something important, there, that bears a lot of thinking on. Not much more anyone can add! :+1:

(KM) #36

I was thinking maybe the last few posts should go into a separate topic, maybe something like “Why The World Frowns On Carnivores.” But maybe that’s just not an appropriate question for a forum on diet. :v:

#37

oh yea I feel ya on this ‘big issue’ out there on how ‘great’ are veg/plant matter etc for us.

remember too alot of 'veg/plants/fruit etc. were not ‘useable’ for cultivation to the extent they are now. Much cross breeding, GMO manipulation, and alot of ‘work’ has gone into making ‘that ‘specific’ kale’ edible and somewhat enjoyable…but olden days, eat kale off the earth as it was intended to be and the bitterness etc would curl ones lips ya know :slight_smile:

Since this is carnivore one thing I read and then researched more on my own was this:

https://justmeat.co/docs/health-dangers-of-a-plant-based-diet.pdf

It really shows what the toxin accumulative effects and more can do to us kinda like one good read but if more skeptical etc. then we have to go off and research more on our own. I did just that. And doing this gives alot more insight.

It was wild when I saw ‘maize’ (corn of course) from the Mayan time and they hit a food pit area to excavate and corn was like 4 inches long if that. Small. Nothing to it at all. I was like in awe. I was thinking OMG THAT is what corn was back so long ago? Not corn today, all big and jacked up wtih extra genes to enhance sugar content etc. I thought my gosh to ‘make corn flour’ one in that tribe would need tons of that tiny corn to even make one flatbread LOL So we do know our food is not really what we do think it is ya know.

just good chat on it all

(KM) #38

I think … and oh boy, here I go tiptoeing into the political / religious again …

The bottom line is that the earth can’t support 8 billion carnivorous humans. So either we go in the direction of reducing the population, which sounds awful to most people even if it’s tempered with ‘by old-age attrition or decreased birth rate’, or we go in the direction of providing every existing human with at least enough calories to remain alive - which means plants. That sounds like the lesser of two evils even if the diet keeping them alive makes them sick, except that in a big picture, it ultimately means population expansion, exacerbating the existing problem.

For those of us at the very top of the food chain, carnivore is sustainable, healthy and good for the planet overall if it’s done mindfully. I don’t doubt or argue that for a moment, and frankly I’m not selfless enough to throw myself on the vegan bandwagon, especially knowing that it’s ultimately an awful idea to expand a population that’s already got plenty of unhealthy, malnourished, carb-fed people because that’s really all that appears possible to feed them at this point.

The problem, for me, is … well, probably the problem is having been raised by a socialist Dane. :crazy_face:

#39

@kib1---- again I feel ya on this. NOT to get overly political and more I easily see an agenda to ‘herd humans’ down the path that ‘those superior beings’ see as a future to ‘control’ the population.

it isn’t truly unseen. we know it from history. control the food and water, control the entire population and gear them the way ‘those above’ want it to progress.

Ol’ England, old every country. Royalty ate meat. Peasants/slaves/ and under classes ate more porridge and gruel and less subsistance foods. Keeps humans ‘less than’ so no revolts hopefully :slight_smile:

Also financially. Cheap food. Needed for humans. But cheap food means more sickness thru ‘what food is today of course’ and at that same time, lower economic issues means humans MUST focus on daily survival. Pay the bills to stay in your home. Gotta buy SOME cheap food to survive. In the end everyone is so focused on daily work and survival no one has time even to ‘worry or understand’ the big picture of it all as we are being directed. ‘Baffle them with BullSh**’ means one can’t see the big picture cause one must take care of family and life at all costs. So there is tons of ways life is not fair, life is being controlled thru taxing, cheap foods, no equality levels and more…we see it all the time.

our food supply is a biggie in the big picture as I see it.

(NOW THIS BY FAR is my personal opinion on what I wrote LOL
this is not in any way meant to be facts and more as in an overall view ya know of what life is on this planet, but darn I can research ‘history’ and see how the truth of it rolls :))

(KM) #40

The thing that messes with me is that many of the current “royalty” are promoting that lesser diet for everyone, including themselves. Perhaps I’m just unduly influenced by a few Very Visible Vegans, but the current wave of history feels like it’s not just touting grain and drain for the masses, it’s promising it as a life enhancing ‘cure’ for everyone. An aspirational diet.